Shining a bright light into the dark corners of the shadow-world of literary scams, schemes, and pitfalls. Also providing advice for writers, industry news and commentary, and a focus on the weird and wacky things that happen at the fringes of the publishing world.

November 29, 2011

Today I saw the following statement used as justification for choosing a fee-based publisher that charges its authors nearly $4,000, and actively presents itself as a real publisher, rather than a vanity publisher or a (very costly) self-publishing service:

A couple ratios I read a while back convinced me I did the right thing by publishing through [pay-to-play publisher's name redacted]. One ratio involved an author finding an agent - 1-in-5000 - and the other involved an agent finding a publisher - 1-in-100.

I've seen these sorts of statistics (most of which appear to be plucked from thin air, and few of which are ever linked to actual sources of information) used again and again to justify bad decisions--from settling for fee-charging agents, to paying huge amounts of money to deceptive "publishers," to defaulting directly to self-publishing (there are good reasons to self-publish, but believing that it's impossible for a new writer to find an agent or a commercial publishing deal isn't one of them). It's unfortunately very easy for writers to buy into these faux numbers--whether out of fear, or inexperience, or simply because they vindicate writers' own frustration with rejection. But if you look at the numbers closely, they don't hold up.

The problem with the first statistic is that it assumes that all authors and all manuscripts are equal, and thus equally in competition with one another. But manuscripts fall into markets and genres, and the competition within each market or genre is different. Beyond that, the hard truth is that most of the manuscripts that are circulating at any given time are not commercially publishable (anyone who has ever looked at an agent's or publisher'sslush pile will confirm this). Perhaps 10% even approach publishability; a much smaller percentage is actually marketable. If your manuscript is marketable--which really is the biggest "if" for writers whose goal is traditional publication--you aren't competing with every writer out there, just with the very small number whose work is also marketable. Your odds, in other words, are better than you think.

The problem with the second statistic is that it is very clearly illogical. Agents earn their income from commissions on sales--i.e., they get paid only if they sell something. If agents sold only 1 in every 100 manuscripts they represented, they couldn't make enough money to keep their doors open--except maybe the disreputable ones who charge fees. (Nor, with so few sales, is it likely that trade publishers would be able to churn out over 300,000 new titles a year in the USA alone.) And imagine the work load, if for every success you also had to market 99 duds! No agent will manage to sell every single manuscript--but no agent could possibly remain in business with such a high failure rate.

The fact that not every manuscript will sell punctures another common myth: that it's harder to find an agent than it is to get a publishing deal. Publishers have a one-to-one relationship with the manuscripts they acquire: every single manuscript they take on gets published. Agents know that not every manuscript they represent will find a home--but they need enough sales to keep their businesses going. In other words, they need spares. So while a publisher will only take on manuscripts it will publish, an agent will take on any manuscript he or she thinksmay sell--within the limits of his or her workload, of course.

It is certainly tough to find a reputable agent. But it is very far from impossible. And even if your agent search does strike out, there is a huge alternative market in the large number of small presses that don't charge their authors a penny. Unless you want to self-publish (in which case you don't have to shell out anything close to $4,000), there's no reason ever to pay for publication.

November 25, 2011

Writers: Forget about that boring day job. Forget about tedious book promotion. Heck, forget about writing books! There's another way to make money--and it was created with authors in mind.

I received a spam a couple of weeks ago from an outfit called The Best Authors Lounge for a query letter webinar. Intrigued by the sizeable signup fee ($74.99, rising to $99.99 after November 15), as well as the presenter's apparent lack of any professional experience that would qualify her to teach query letter-writing, I decided to investigate further.

From The Best Authors Lounge's opening page:

In order to be “the best author” you can be, join TBA Lounge, an interactive social network that puts the writer, freelance journalist, the author, the songwriter, the poet, and the speaker in a positive atmosphere in which you can be supported and therefore become more successful doing what you love to do, creating a world out of words.

So far, so groovy. There's a catch, though: to join this social network, you have to pay--and it isn't cheap. Fees range from $100 to $200 per month, depending on the level of networking you desire. There are also courses you can take (for more fees, natch) from something called TBA University. You can even self-publish your book, via a variety of packages ranging from $698 to over $1,200.

Actually, it's just one part of an MLM scheme--its parent is Team FAM, an MLM organization that claims to "combine THREE of the World's Largest Industries into ONE: Real Estate, Personal Development, and Network Marketing!", but whose real business is selling would-be entrepreneurs a system for establishing an income-producing referral network.

This is the second MLM scheme I've encountered that involves books--the now-defunct BookWise program was the other--but it is the first that specifically targets writers. Bottom line: despite the literary trimmings, TBA Lounge is far less about authors and writing, than it is about the recruitment of participants to sell the service to others.

This prompted an explosion of negative commentary, including criticism from self-publishedauthors. But I've been following the Book Country story for some time--Book Country staff have been active in reaching out to the writing/blogging community--and a good deal of the commentary I've seen is either inaccurate, or ignores the forest for the trees.

It's a scam!

A fair number of people have been claiming that Book Country's self-publishing service is a scam or a con. How, exactly? You may not think the service is a good idea; you may not like its terms. That doesn't make it a scam. A scam is an enterprise deliberately set up to deceive, cheat, and defraud victims. Using the word so loosely and inaccurately cheapens it, and makes it less meaningful when it's used to describe a real fraud.

Book Country is targeting vulnerable writers with deceptive hype!

I wonder if some of the people who are saying this have actually looked at the self-publishing pages on Book Country's website. There's actually very little hype, and none of the implied false promises of success that you find with so many other self-publishing services.

Book Country is gouging authors by keeping 30% of their income!

The problem here is that many people are comparing apples to oranges, contrasting Book Country, which acts as a middleman, with Amazon's KDP program or Barnes and Noble's PubIt, where there is no middleman.

All middleman self-publishing services keep a percentage of authors' income. Book Country keeps more than some, and less than others. For instance, Lulu keeps 20%. CreateSpace keeps 20-60%, depending on what distribution options you pick. Author Solutions companies (iUniverse, Xlibris, etc.) keep a whopping 80%.

I'm not saying this is good or bad. I'm just saying that Book Country isn't unique.

Book Country is overpriced!

Packages from self-publishing services run the price gamut. You can pay anything from $99 to over $10,000. Book Country's packages, which range from $99 to around $600, are at the lower end of this spectrum.

I'd also point out that, unlike other self-publishing endeavors associated with major publishers, Book Country hasn't contracted its program out to Author Solutions, but is doing the work in-house.

The fees don't even include editing or marketing!

Seriously? That's a criticism? The editing and marketing services sold by self-publishing companies--whether a la carte, or included in publishing packages as a way of bumping up the price--are like liquor in restaurants: a major profit center, because they can be bought cheap and sold high. Like cocktails, they are frequently overpriced, undersized, and cause for serious buyer's remorse once consumed. I frankly think that one of Book Country's strengths is that it doesn't lard its packages with this crap, or nickel-and-dime authors by shilling it separately.

It's not self-publishing, it's vanity publishing!

This is absolutely correct. So what? Publishing through Lulu, CreateSpace, or any other middleman service that charges a fee is also vanity publishing--yet authors who use these services routinely identify themselves as self-published or (shudder) "indie," and no one challenges them. Besides, the lines between self-publishing and vanity publishing have become so blurred over the past decade or so that I'm not sure this is a meaningful distinction any longer.

Am I endorsing Book Country's self-publishing program? No. Am I suggesting that anyone run out and use it? Certainly not. And I remain concerned by the potential conflicts of interest that arise when trade publishers expand into self-publishing.

But given the realities of Book Country's program--especially compared with other trade publishers' self-pub divisions, all of which are much more directly connected to their parent companies--it seems to me that the hating is out of proportion (and I do wish that some of the commentary were more accurate). Sure, Book Country's packages look costly when you contrast them with self-publishing on the Kindle or the Nook; sure, there's no need to use a middleman service when you can DIY for free. But the truth is that not everyone wants to DIY--and there's absolutely no shame in that, as long as you do your research and choose your middleman wisely. If you want a middleman, you can do a lot worse than Book Country.

All of which, of course, is entirely separate from the question of whether or not it's a good idea for you to self-publish to begin with.

It's interesting how human nature seems to drive us toward caste and class systems. One of the things that has really jumped out at me in the response to Book Country is how the self-publishing community seems to be organizing itself into hierarchies, drawing a line between digital self-publishers and those who use middleman services. The implication is that only the former are truly self-published, are truly entrepreneurs. Could we be moving toward a point where the stigma that has traditionally attached to vanity publishing will arise from within the self-pub community, rather than from outside?

LSP was sued in 2007 by one of its authors, alleging breach of contract, fraud in the inducement, and intentional infliction of emotional distress. The author prevailed: in April 2008, default judgments totaling more than $30,000 were entered against Light Sword Publishing and Light Sword's then-owners, Bonnie Kirby and Linda Daly. (The judgments were later declared non-dischargeable and dismissed.)

The judgments (and my blog post) occasioned quite a bit of discussion, and in May or June 2008, in time-honored dodgy-publisher style, Daly changed Light Sword Publishing's name to LSP Digital. It doesn't seem to have helped. December 2008, Linda Daly and Light Sword Publishing filed Chapter 7 bankruptcy petitions with the US Bankruptcy Court in the Eastern District of Michigan. By March 2010, the bankruptcy trustee had decided to abandon assets and close the file; and in June 2010, Daly was granted a discharge.

Wrong. Daly and LSP are back, with a new website that includes many of the same books (apparently, when the bankruptcy trustee decided to abandon assets, he didn't order return of rights to authors) as well as a new line called Coffee Break Reads. Naturally, the website--which blandly proclaims that LSP is "A publisher who believes in timeless tradition, using modern technology"--gives no hint of LSP's or Daly's earlier troubles.

Do some research to find out. A websearch on the publisher’s name will sometimes turn up information–often on authors’ websites or in their blogs. Or contact Writer Beware. We’ll tell you if we’ve gotten any negative reports.

Don’t skip this step. Some small presses that fail under one name start up again almost immediately under another; and staff who leave under questionable circumstances may start their own publishing enterprises....It’s a very, very good idea to do some digging into a small press’s business background so you can be reasonably sure it doesn’t have a seamy past.

The re-launch of LSP Digital is a prime example of why this is so important.

November 15, 2011

Two weeks ago, Amazon announced its brand-new Kindle Owners' Lending Library, which makes it possible for Amazon Prime members to borrow ebooks for free. Members can borrow one ebook a month, which they can keep on their Kindle for as long as they like. Since borrowing is limited to one book at a time, downloading a new title causes the old one to be deleted.

Sounds cool, right? Except that over the days that followed the Library's launch, it was discovered that Amazon in fact didn't have permission from many of the publishers whose ebooks were included in the Library. Among the questions posed by this unauthorized use: how do authors get paid? (For a good overview of this and other issues, see this blog post by agent Rachelle Gardner.)

The AAR has released a statement expressing its concerns about author payment. A further concern: most book contracts don't provide for author compensation under subscription models, and "[w]ithout a clear contractual understanding with their authors, it is unclear to us how publishers can participate in this program."

Now the Authors Guild has weighed in with concerns similar to the AAR's, particularly about publishers' contractual right to enroll titles in the Library. The AG's full statement, which includes suggestions about what to do if your book is included without your approval, appears below.

Are any of the books in Amazon’s new e-book subscription/lending program properly there?

Earlier this month, Amazon launched its Kindle Online Lending Library as a perk for its best group of customers, the millions who’ve paid $79 per year to join Amazon Prime and get free delivery of their Amazon purchases. Under the Lending Library program, Amazon Prime members are allowed to download for free onto their Kindles any of more than 5,000 books. Customers are limited to one book per month and one book at a time – when a new book is downloaded, the old one disappears from the Kindle.

The program has caused quite a stir in the publishing industry, for good reason (as you'll see).

First, let’s look at how books from some major U.S. trade publishers wound up on the Lending Library list.

Major Publishers Turn Amazon Down

Amazon approached the six largest U.S. trade book publishers earlier this year to seek their participation in the program. By all accounts, each refused. Small wonder. Publishers aren’t eager to allow Amazon to undermine the economics of the e-book market, representing the lone bright spot for the industry, by permitting an estimated two to five million Amazon Prime customers to start downloading e-books for free. So books from the Big Six publishers – Random House, Simon & Schuster, Penguin, HarperCollins, Hachette, and Macmillan – are not in the Library Lending program.

Amazon’s attempts to enlist the next tier of U.S. trade book publishers, major publishers that are slightly smaller than the Big Six, appear to have fared no better. Many, perhaps all, also refused.

No matter. Amazon simply disregarded these publishers’ wishes, and enrolled many of their titles in the program anyway. Some of these publishers learned of Amazon’s unilateral decision as the first news stories about the program appeared.

How can Amazon get away with this? By giving its boilerplate contract with these publishers a tortured reading.

Amazon has decided that it doesn’t need the publishers’ permission, because, as Amazon apparently sees it, its contracts with these publishers merely require it to pay publishers the wholesale price of the books that Amazon Prime customers download. By reasoning this way, Amazon claims it can sell e-books at any price, even giving them away, so long as the publishers are paid.

From our understanding of Amazon’s standard contractual terms, this is nonsense – publishers did not surrender this level of control to the retailer. Amazon’s boilerplate terms specifically contemplate the sale of e-books, not giveaways, subscriptions, or lending (Amazon does have a lending program that some publishers have authorized, but it’s a program that allows customers – not Amazon – to lend their purchased e-books). Amazon can make other uses of e-books only with the publishers’ consent.

Amazon, in other words, appears to be boldly breaching its contracts with these publishers. This is an exercise of brute economic power. Amazon knows it can largely dictate terms to non-Big Six publishers, and it badly wanted to launch this program with some notable titles.

Why did it matter so much to Amazon? It’s all about the Kindle Fire, and Amazon’s unexpected e-book device battle with Apple and especially Barnes & Noble. (More on that, in another post.)

Some Small Publishers Sign On, Without Authority

Now, let’s look at the publishers who did willingly sign on to the Kindle Lending Library. Many (but not all) of these are smaller, newer companies that devote their efforts to e-book and on-demand publishing. They signed licensing agreements with Amazon for a selection of their titles, providing for a flat annual fee per title.

While these publishers generally have the right to license e-book uses for many of their authors’ titles (just as most trade publishers do), our reading of the standard terms of these contracts is that they do not have the right to do so without the prior approval of the books’ authors.

Licenses are traditionally done on an advance-and-royalty basis. In this way, the interests of the author and the publisher are aligned: if the license pays off, both benefit. When a list of titles is licensed for a flat fee, however, interests can easily become misaligned, and opportunities for mischief abound.

For example, a publisher could cherry pick a selection of “loss leaders” to license for unlimited use in order to attract readers to the publisher’s other books. To avoid this conflict of interests, publishing contracts have for decades included an array of clauses intended to prevent a publisher from using cheap or free copies of one author’s books to promote another’s.

Under most (perhaps all) publishing contracts, a license to Amazon’s Lending Library is outside the bounds of the publisher’s licensing authority. This isn’t a minor matter – in order to protect the author’s interests, all publishers should be asking permission before entering into such a bulk licensing agreement, and most would need to seek a contract amendment to do so. For more on this, see the post of Simon Lipskar of Writers House at the AAR’s blog.

What to do if your book is in the program

If your book is in the Lending Library without your approval, we recommend that you:

1. Get in touch with your publisher (or ask your agent to do so) and say that you object to your book’s inclusion in the program without your approval and that you do not consent to have your work in any such initiatives without your prior authorization. This is fundamental.

2. Ask your publisher why your book is in the program. The publisher may be using the program to introduce your books to Amazon Prime customers with the hope that they’ll then come back to buy your other titles. Other publishers may be seeking to give some life to quiescent titles. Once you’ve heard your publisher’s rationale (it may be well considered and in your favor), you’ll have to decide whether you’d like your book to remain in the program.

If it’s a major publisher, however, you may learn that Amazon chose to include your work in its lending program over your publisher’s objections. If so, we expect that you will be compensated for the uses (Amazon is paying its regular wholesale price for the e-books from these publishers), but this may still not be in your best interests: Amazon, for its own reasons, has chosen to override your publisher’s marketing plan.

No matter what you decide to do, please be in touch – one of our attorneys would be happy to discuss the matter with you.

So, are any of the more than 5,000 books legitimately in the program? Probably. Amazon published 138 of the titles in the lending program, according to Publishers Lunch (subscription required). Other publishers may have gotten their authors' permission, or may have unusual contracts that give them authority to enter into bulk licenses without their authors' approval. If so, we've yet to learn of such arrangements.

November 11, 2011

An overview of issues to consider if you're thinking of submitting to a small press. For instance, stability can be a problem--the attrition rate among small presses is very high--as can competence. It's easy and cheap to set yourself up as a publisher these days, and not everyone who does so has the necessary expertise.

Tips on evaluating small presses. Is there a fee? Are there any complaints? What kind of distribution is in place? How does the publisher market itself and its authors? These questions and more can help you identify the right publisher for your manuscript, and screen out those that are less desirable.

Warning signs of vanity publishers masquerading as small presses. Unfortunately, it's quite common for fee-charging publishers to pretend to be legitimate small presses. Some of them are quite inventive in hiding their fees, or pretending they don't charge fees at all. This section provides a handy rundown on some of their sneaky tricks.

A discussion of misleading terminology. Whether out of inexperience or an active desire to deceive, small presses may describe themselves in misleading ways. For instance, the term "traditional publisher"--which is intended to conjure up images of commercial publishers like Random House or Sourcebooks--is almost meaningless. A small press may also be confused, or want to confuse you, about the difference between a wholesaler and a distributor.

Links to helpful resources that will, among other things, help you research a small press's reputation and identify common bad contract clauses.

We've also discontinued the Electronic Publishing page, and folded much of its content into the Small Press page. When we first put the Electronic Publishing page online over a decade ago, epublishing and print publishing were parallel universes, but those differences have eroded--over the past couple of years especially--and we no longer see a need for a separate page on epublishing.

Please visit the Small Presses page, and let me know what you think by leaving a comment here. All comments and suggestions are welcome.

A couple of weeks ago, Claire King received an email from the BWA announcing a literary agent referral program through its new Agent Division (Claire has posted the text of the email on her blog). According to the email, "a number of partner agents have asked us to help them identify potential literary gems to save them ploughing through their slush pile." Writers were invited to submit a synopsis and samples, which the BWA would then "consider" for a referral.

Are such programs (and the BWA's is not the only one) worthwhile? Not in my opinion. Literary agents are already the middlemen of the publishing world; as such, they expect to be approached by writers directly, and there's really no need for an intermediary to add another layer to the process. Plus, as tempting as it may seem to have someone else do the work for you, it's far more effective to control the process yourself, since you know your own work best and thus can best research and choose whom to approach.

More specifically, as Jane Smith points out, the BWA doesn't identify the agents it's working with--which means that writers have no way of verifying the agents' track records and reputations. Also, the list of requested genres includes "Short stories and Poetry for anthologies," material that reputable literary agents usually don't consider--which raises still more questions about the usefulness of this service.

from what you have submitted, the assessors could not refer your work to agents immediately, but they see great potential here. The issues highlighted above can be rectified easily, so before you go any further with this, we suggest that you need a consultancy to advice on your synopsis, positioning the book for an agent/publisher, highlighting USPs and ensuring that the main plots are woven into the synopsis which also needs some basic formatting. We believe this will encourage the agent/publisher to read on to see its true potential.

You need to find an experienced literary consultant/marketing expert that can help you with this. There are many providers out there and it shouldn’t cost very much but it’s important to find the right person that knows what agents/publishers are looking for. Please do not have it edited at this stage, as this is not required. If you would like us to arrange this for you, please let me know immediately.

(The bolding is Jane's.) So in addition to offering referrals to literary agents, is the BWA also offering referrals to literary consultants? If so, this is odd--I can't think of any industry expert who'd suggest that writers hire a literary consultant to tweak their synopsis. Also, if the BWA is providing consultant referrals, what's the relationship--if any--between the BWA and the consultant(s)? Transparency is extremely important here, since, even though such a program may be perfectly above-board, referrals of this sort have been extensively abused over the years.

If you tried clicking the link in that quote from Jane, you'll note that it leads to a deleted page. Here's why: Harry Bingham received a threat of legal action from BWA's solicitors. (He has since received another.) And when Claire King wrote to the BWA (at the BWA's own invitation) with a list of questions, she was told that "this matter is now being investigated and dealt with by our solicitors and they will be contacting you."

One has to wonder why the BWA has chosen to address the situation in this manner. Whatever bad press may be generated by skeptical bloggers--and despite the questions that have been raised about the BWA's structure and operations, I'm not aware that anyone has accused it outright of dishonesty--the kind of publicity created by attempting to silence critics with legal threats is orders of magnitude worse.

In short, I know tremendously little about the BWA and its operations, and have no reason to think that its activities are any less honourable than our own. If its model is non-conventional, that’s fine too.

On the other hand, the torrent of internet gossip and implication threatens the BWA’s reputation and, to some degree, the reputation of all those who, like the Writers’ Workshop, do their damndest to help the new writer.

In conclusion – and here I’m addressing the BWA / Brit Writers directly – your current non-disclosure of information is, in my view, causing legitimate concern amongst the community of new writers. We will always vigorously champion any organisation or initiative which helps the new writer. I hope we can champion you. But at present we need some answers. I invite you to supply them.

Edited 11/16 to add: In a statement dated today, the BWA has withdrawn its threatened legal action against Harry Bingham, Claire King, and Jane Smith. However, it has largely declined to answer Harry's questions.

This article was originally written and posted on 17th Nov and relied in part on a number of written statements made by the BWA, who knew their statements would be scrutinised. Unfortunately, I now have incontrovertible evidence that the company lies, even in circumstances where its claims are likely to be closely examined. Nothing this company says can be taken on trust. Its financial promises are unreliable. The same is true of its literary promises. Writers should avoid having anything at all to do with this company. The whole thing is incredibly sad.
This paragraph replaces a previous, somewhat more upbeat, conclusion to this post.

November 2, 2011

I'm writing this in my local Panera, which is one of the few places where I can power my computer just now. Here in Massachusetts, we are still suffering through the after-effects of the massive Snowtober storm, and after four days I still don't have power at home. And it has been COLD. And my friends are in the same boat, so no shelter there.

I feel like a hobo right now, migrating from place to place in search of warmth and electricity. This morning I was at the gym (hello, hot shower). When I've dawdled as long as possible over my second mug of Panera tea, I'll move on to the library at the University of Massachusetts.After that, home to my dark, chill house, which at noon was actually colder inside than out. It may be Thursday or Friday before power returns, but my fingers are crossed that when I get home tonight I'll see the porch light on. Wish me luck.

At any rate, this is a little late for Halloween--but today's post is about zombie literary agencies...agencies that die only to rise again and lurch out onto the Internet in search of writers' brains. More specifically, it's about one zombie agency, which is attempting to eat brains under two zombie identities.

A few weeks ago, I began getting questions about the Franklin-Madison Literary Agency. Never having heard the name before, I did some research. What I found rang warning bells. From the creepy image of what look like conjoined twins on the opening page, to the badly-written text, to the absence of any substantive information on the agency and its staff, Franklin-Madison offers an impressive collection of red flags.

Franklin-Madison also gave me a strong sense of deja vu, both in some of the qualities of its website and its Washington, DC address. But none of the writers who contacted me mentioned fees, and domain registration information (which can sometimes provide important data) wasn't helpful--so even though I had a strong hunch about which zombie agency had created Franklin-Madison as a zombie clone, I couldn't prove it.

I've finally received a copy of the Franklin-Madison contract and intake correspondence. Neither, of course, contained any (obvious) mention of Zombie Agency, and crucial aspects of the contract differed from Zombie Agency's (a term of 360 days rather than 180 days, for instance). The upfront fee was the same, though ($150 for US submissions, or $250 for US plus overseas submissions). More tellingly, Zombie Agency failed to cover all its tracks.

Here's a screenshot of the first page of the Franklin-Madison contract (click for a larger view):

Note that it's a pdf document. The file name (Franklin-Madison_Agency_Agreement-signed-1.pdf) is consistent with the contract's heading. But see what happens when you access the File menu, and click the Document Properties link:

Franklin-Madison's creator has forgotten to remove Zombie Agency's toe tag--i.e., the document's title, which is Clark, Mendelson, and Scott, LLC.

Clark, Mendelson, and Scott is a fee-charging "agency" that I began hearing about last June, and exposed on this blog as the risen corpse of fee-charger American Literary Agents of Washington Inc., a.k.a. Capital Literary Agency, a.k.a. Washington Literary Agency, a.k.a. Washington House, a.k.a. Trident Media Company/Mandrill Publishing, a.k.a. New World Media/American Bookpress (all vanity publishers).

These companies--about all of which Writer Beware received many complaints--were run by a guy named Samuel C. Asinugo out of Washington, DC from the late 1990's until around 2008, when Asinugo was found guilty of forgery. No doubt remembering how easy it was to eat writers' brains, Asinugo raised his fee-charging endeavors from the dead as soon as he was able, first with Clark, Mendelson, and Scott, and now with Franklin-Madison Literary Agency.

Possibly this zombie clone is a result of my blog post--which I know Asinugo knows about, since he (under an alias) sent me a legal threat. On the other hand, Asinugo may simply be attempting to diversify in an attempt to snag more victims. With all the semi-sleazy self-publishing companies and dodgy small presses out there, the brain-eating business is a bit more competitive than it used to be.

So there you have it: Zombie Agency times two. Because where there's one, there are always likely to be more.